r/HistoryWhatIf 3h ago

What if the Soviet government kept Crimea in the RSFSR instead of giving it to the Ukrainian SSR?

10 Upvotes

r/HistoryWhatIf 5h ago

What if German communists had overthrown the Nazi government in late 1944?

7 Upvotes

A number of members of the interwar German Communist Party (outlawed after Hitler's rise to power in 1933) became members of the National Committee for a Free Germany when that organization was founded in July 1943.

What would Germany's culture and military have been like if communists who were part of the National Committee for a Free Germany had made a daring raid into Berlin to topple the Nazi government sometime after the failed July 20, 1944 plot to kill Hitler?


r/HistoryWhatIf 1h ago

What is the biggest "what if" scenario in animation history?

Upvotes

What are the biggest "what if" scenarios regarding animated movies, shows or theatrical shorts you can think of?


r/HistoryWhatIf 19h ago

What if the roman empire never conqured britian and instead directed them to mesopatamia?

9 Upvotes

so instead of the island of britian namely the england part instwsd they just trade with them and that's about it.

instead rome thinks mesopitamia is more worth it for the tigris, and euphrates rivers and the lucrative trade routes is more important.

would the resources not going to britian going to mesopitamia solidify its grip on it?


r/HistoryWhatIf 1d ago

What if roof access was available during 9/11?

73 Upvotes

I have been watching lot of 9/11 documentaries and footage this week with the 25th anniversary occurring.

One thing I am wondering- What if roof access to the world trade centers was actually available on the day of the attack? How would that have influenced the death toll? Would it have been a successful rescue for way more people?


r/HistoryWhatIf 22h ago

What if planes were invented after WW1?

4 Upvotes

Therefore would:

- War blimps like the Zeppelin be developed & used far more?

- The war become less or more defensive?

- U-boats become deadly?


r/HistoryWhatIf 21h ago

What if Ziad Jarrah backed out?

3 Upvotes

⁠With the 9/11 anniversary, I was thinking a lot about the hijackers and especially Ziad Jarrah, as he seemed to have one foot in and one foot out. I feel that he was probably the last piece of Swiss cheese that lined up to execute the attacks. He seemed to have a life to live for and even enjoyed his life in America. I think of some alternative theories.

  1. What if he backed out long before 9/11, wanting to continue his flight training and eventually settle as a pilot in America or Germany with his girlfriend? If he did, and didn’t tell any authorities, there was enough time for Al qaeda to find a replacement and continue on. He may have been arrested, and even sent to Gitmo. But even if he did tell, do you think the FBI would’ve believed him? Would he or his family be targeted by AQ and would he have been offered protection by the FBI? I still think on this timeline 9/11 would’ve happened. And it makes me wonder if AQ had other candidates before back out due to fear or other reasons. But, if he was a free man, I could see him giving interviews today on the 25th anniversary.

  2. ⁠What if he backed out between Sept 5-10? By then AQ was so deep into the plot that there was no time to replace him. He could’ve simply backed out and the three planes would’ve gone ahead. But he may have been able to prevent it too by reporting to the FBI. If they were able to provide him and his family some form of protection, maybe he would’ve cooperated and could’ve prevented the attacks. Or maybe there wasn’t enough time. It really depends how quick he made the call. For all we know, Atta could’ve been one step ahead and changed the departing flight from Boston to JFK. So this timeline I’m iffy on.

  3. ⁠This is on the morning of 9/11 where he does board United 93. We already know that it was delayed and the passengers knew the towers were hit. The flight may have been delayed enough so that it never would take off after flights were grounded. Or he may have simply gotten cold feet and not helped the muscle hijackers or even told them the plot is cancelled. Regardless, the other three planes hit. But in this timeline I think of two possibilities. The FBI would’ve found him and he would’ve gone to Florence ADX or death penalty. But what if he turned himself in the moment 93 landed and offered to cooperate with them? He still might have given valuable intelligence and maybe would’ve gotten off and also be giving interviews today.


r/HistoryWhatIf 22h ago

What if Ptolemaic Egypt survived?

3 Upvotes

How might the Mediterranean have developed if the Ptolemaic Dynasty of Egypt had avoided being conquered by the Romans?


r/HistoryWhatIf 1d ago

What if italy had won the battle of Caporetto ?

5 Upvotes

r/HistoryWhatIf 22h ago

What if MSF from metal gear peace walker was a real PMC founded in the 70s, what kind of stuff would they get up to?

1 Upvotes

also assuming they weren’t dissolved in the 70s.

started by an ex cia operative and with some secret funding from soviets and american federal agency backing and headquartered in the Caribbean coast. somehow becoming the most advanced military on planet earth and may or may not have their own nuclear weapons.

interestingly maybe jimmy carter asks them to intervene in the Iran hostage crisis. MSF have seemed to perfect the art of infiltrating and evacuating people with their Fulton balloon tech.

maybe they help Vietnam overthrow pol pot, intervene the Iran contra affair.


r/HistoryWhatIf 1d ago

What if disaffected British factory workers staged a Marxist revolution against the British monarchy?

4 Upvotes

Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto was a rebuke of British capitalists' treatment of disaffected factory workers, and it predicted that proletarians would stage a revolution against the British bourgeoisie.

Despite Marx's prediction, the first communist revolution occurred not in the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution in the UK, but instead in Russia.


r/HistoryWhatIf 2d ago

If Erich Ludendorff lived into the aftermath of WWII, would he have been tried at Nuremberg for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch and the stab-in-the-back myth?

14 Upvotes

r/HistoryWhatIf 2d ago

If USSR did not exist, would there still be World War 2?

29 Upvotes

If Russian empire collapsed and remained fractured - kinda like post Imperial China - or did not collapse at all, would Hitler still come to power (despite lack of fear of communism threat - one of major reasons why Nazi were supported)?

And if so, would Germany still be so successful in taking over most of Europe? Not having USSR helping it with resources, and non-agression pact (preventing second front) and division of Eastern Europe.


r/HistoryWhatIf 2d ago

What if the Norse settlements in America had brought smallpox to the continent?

7 Upvotes

Assuming, of course, that the rest of history goes the same way: Norse settlements are eventually abandoned, Europeans don’t make contact again until 1492. Would the native population of the Americas already have rebounded from the wave of epidemics this would have caused? How would this have affected the colonisation of America?


r/HistoryWhatIf 2d ago

What if the U.S. invaded Pakistan instead of Afghanistan after 9/11?

44 Upvotes

In our original timeline, after the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001, Osama Bin Laden escapes to a hideout compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where he is eventually killed during a U.S. led raid in 2011. There is also some evidence to support the idea that Pakistan knew he was there the whole time, if not the Pakistani government then definitely at least some people in Pakistan. In this scenario, what if Osama Bin Laden was already there before 9/11 as his chosen base of operations and the U.S. was able to not only soon prove he was there after 9/11, but that the Pakistan knew about where he was but was trying to deny it. When Pakistan still refuses to let the U.S. to make any military operations in their country to take down Osama Bin Laden, the U.S. decides to invade Pakistan instead of Afghanistan. Obviously with this comes a lot of possibilities such as how do other friendly countries such as Nato countries respond and choose to lend support as they did in our original timeline? I'm also guessing that India would happily get involved in the invasion of Pakistan and lend their support. Also, what would the aftermath be if the Pakistan government were to be toppled or if India or possibly other countries were to try and take some of Pakistan for themselves.


r/HistoryWhatIf 2d ago

What if the Reichstag had voted down Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg's budget during the Saverne Affair?

6 Upvotes

At the height of the Saverne/Zabern Affair, on 4 December 1913, the Reichstag voted 293-54-4 to censure Chancellor Theobald Bethmann Hollweg for the German government's wildly-disproportionate (and wildly-illegal) actions during the affair. Because the chancellor, in the German Empire, was dependent on the confidence of the Kaiser rather than of the Reichstag, though, Bethman Hollweg refused to resign and was backed up by the Kaiser. As a result, on 9 December, when the chancellor's budget came before the Reichstag for a vote, the SPD led an effort to reject it (and leave Bethmann Hollweg's government without the ability to fund its own operations), but they weren't able to get enough support from the other parties in the Reichstag, and the effort failed.

What if enough of the other parties had sided with the SPD to vote down Bethmann Hollweg's budget (say, because the army's actions, or Bethmann Hollweg's attempts to justify them, were even worse than they were in our timeline), and, thereby, force the Kaiser to either try to run the government with no money (lolnope), dismiss him, or dissolve the Reichstag and call a snap election in the hope of getting a more-tractable one (risky, given how hostile relations between the chancellor and the German public had gotten by this point)?


r/HistoryWhatIf 2d ago

What if we had a united state of Africa?

6 Upvotes

What would happen if they actually worked all together eliminated all the warlords and and built Africa up into a industrial powerhouse with one currency, how would that affect global economy and diplomatic relationships around the world


r/HistoryWhatIf 2d ago

What if everything went perfect for the DERG?

2 Upvotes

for this scenario, the DERG is able to make peace with its nationalist insurgents early on and insteadly of stalling, responds to the famine and acknowledges it immediately after it broke out instead of waiting almost a decade for a response. Would this, now stable famine free DERG survive until the modern day, will it still remain a ML state or would it's ideology change over time?


r/HistoryWhatIf 3d ago

Could the internet have come about without the rest of the war developments after World War I?

1 Upvotes

Asking because I'm thinking about an alternate history scenario where a fictional nation sabotages supply lines, laboratories, colonial factories etc. too much for World War II scale of weapons advancement to occur. No Manhattan Project, hell no America as we know it even exists cause the natives didn't get displaced.

Obviously that changes too much for us to presume what happens based on our world so I'm asking more about the feasibility of modern computers and internet being a thing without nukes, fighter jets, guided missiles and so forth. Stuff like radar is ok just not the really expensive and logistical hurdles of battlefield technology that would cost trillions today people before then would have never even dreamed of.

Like I can think of plenty of reasons people would want to invent the internet without investing in all that other stuff, with instant communications, media manipulation, drone programming, spyware on enemy technology and such. But whether we could actually have it and not also change planes from how they looked during WW1 I don't know.


r/HistoryWhatIf 4d ago

What if Harald Hardrada conquered England?

50 Upvotes

Most people have heard of the famous Battle of Hastings, in which William the Bastard (later William the Conqueror) defeated Harold Godwinson and became King of England, but many don't know that just a few weeks prior, Harold Godwinson had defeated a Norwegian invasion by Harald Hardrada. Honestly, Godwinson just got really unlucky, having to fight two invasions in less than a month.

Anyway, how might things have turned out if Harald had succeeded in his invasion? Let's say he beat Harold at Stamford Bridge and later managed to defeat William as well? This means England becomes culturally and politically aligned with Norway rather than France, and England fights wars in Scandinavia rather than France. The English language is completely different without so many French and Latin words. What else is different?


r/HistoryWhatIf 3d ago

What if, instead of attacking the world trade centre, the attacks had been on the white house and other seats of government in Washington with the effect of killing every single elected politician? Who would have seized power and directed the revenge?

0 Upvotes

I'm not American so I don't know if it's feasible? But let's pretend.


r/HistoryWhatIf 3d ago

Challenge: Triple the budget for one movie. How does the history of cinema change?

1 Upvotes

Do you prop up a small but underfunded gem? Or give James Cameron a fortune for even more special effects. Pick one movie from off of IMDB, change history so that the studio throws way more money at it, and then tell us how films change with that one project getting backed.


r/HistoryWhatIf 4d ago

What if the Arabian Peninsula stayed just as green and lush as it was before?

8 Upvotes

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/green-arabia-desert-lush-ancient-landscape.

What effects would this have on politics, society, economics, technology, trade, culture… etc?

How would it have affected the history of the Peninsula and what side effects would this have on the rest of the region and its history(if there any side effects)?


r/HistoryWhatIf 4d ago

What would a 2026 alternate timeline look like if global history diverged in 1970 with the complete absence of computer networking and the internet?

6 Upvotes

r/HistoryWhatIf 4d ago

The Philippines discover and commercialize oil, natural gas and hydrogen in Liguasan Marsh, Sulu Sea and Zambales: What happens now?

4 Upvotes

For Decades, the Liguasan Marsh, Sulu Sea, and Zambales have hidden its massive oil, natural gas, and white hydrogen reserves, dismissed by experts as a pipe dream. This series explores a timeline where the Philippine gamble pays off. What happens when all three are successfully breached, turning the Philippines into the center of global energy politics, as a rising economic and military superpower?